News written by Andre Yoskowitz (April, 2007)

According to Digitimes and Arstechnica, the much talked about 65nm version of the Xbox 360's "Xenos" GPU will be coming out sometime this fall.

The new GPU will be made on TSMC's 65nm process, due to the new availability of the 65nm eDRAM that goes into the product.

The console's "Xenon" 65nm CPU however, according to Chartered Semi, will be available by mid-2007 and so in theory a version of the console with a 65nm CPU and 90nm GPU could be available in the next few months.

Microsoft will want to begin using the new, smaller chips as soon as possible because the chips run cooler and that will help in redesigning the console's interior for lower costs and higher reliability.

The changes of instituting the new chips will eventually make the 360 cheaper to manufacture and those savings will be passed along to the consumer eventually when the console drops in price.

Basically, wait until the 65nm CPU and GPU are both in the console, as they new units will run cooler, and last longer.

Source:
Arstechnica

According to Semiconductor Today, Shiroishi Semiconductor Inc., a subsidary of Sony, has claimed that they will be increasing production of the blue-violet laser diodes used in all Blu-ray Disc drives to an industry-leading 1.7 million diodes per month. The company has also set plans in motion to increase production to 5 million a month soon.

Increased production of the diodes will help lower prices of Blur-ray drives for consumers and hopefully lower the price of Sony's PlayStation 3

"The right question to ask is whether the full bill of materials is below $499, allowing them to cut price and still avoid losing money. I'm not competent to answer whether it is, but I am competent to say that when cost is below $499, we should look for a cut to that level," Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter told GameDaily BIZ. "The point is that if they're ramping capacity to [5 million diodes], they probably are coming down the cost curve for MPEG chips, dedicated disc drive processors, and every other component. Hard to say for sure, but I'd guess that Sony could squeeze a hundred dollars out of its cost by mid-year, maybe more."

"My guess is that you will see a price cut this year," he continued. "I think that the introduction of the Xbox 360 Elite gives Sony an opportunity to cut price and claim that they offer Blu-ray for only $20 more."

The Pirate Bay, one of the most popular and well-known public torrent tracker sites has announced it will start a new music download site in which the user pays whatever they can afford to download the tracks.

The Swedish-based file sharing organization has been a target of the MPAA, RIAA, and IFPI for some time now as the organization has a blatant disregard for the authority of those groups and becuase they provide a massive forum for the sharing of copyrighted material online.

The new music site, Playble.com will be a monthly subscription service but with a twist. The individual user sets what they want to pay, not the record labels or the site's administrators.

Co-founder Peter Sunde, says that "the artist will receive a portion of the user's fee every time his song is downloaded."

The site will be set up with the the Swedish glam-rock band, Lamont, which has been a vocal opponent of the current structure of the record industry.

"After lengthy discussions about the future of the record industry and its implications for the many talented artists and songwriters around the world, we discovered that we held the same vision," the group said in a statement on its website.

On Monday, the Bush administration added China, Russia and 10 other nations to its so-called priority piracy watchlist for failing to "sufficiently protect American producers of music, movies and other copyrighted material from widespread piracy."

The 12 nations, as well as 31 other countries who were placed on a lower priority list, will be subject to extra scrutiny and eventually, if the administration sees it fit, they can bring trade cases before the WTO.

The list was reported in an annual report that the administration is required to give Congress that highlights problems that American corporation are facing with copyright policy worldwide, which the corporations contend is costing them billions in revenue each year.

"We must defend ideas, inventions and creativity from rip-off artists and thieves," U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab said in a statement accompanying this year's report.

The annual report, known as a "Special 301 Report," placed China, Russia, Argentina, Chile, Egypt, India,
Israel, Lebanon, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela on the high priority list and the U.S hopes that Russia will fufill commitments in upgrading copyright protection. A U.S.-Russia accord last year involving copyright policy was seen by the Bush administration as a key milestone in Russia's efforts to join the WTO.

After the RIAA sent out its latest round of pre-litigation letters to universities around the country, the University of Wisconsin-Madison declined to pass on the letters to its students until a judge ruled in favor of the RIAA.

Today, according to the Capital Times, a federal judge has ordered the university to pass on the letters and hand over the names of the 53 students.

"U.S. District Judge John Shabaz ordered the university Wednesday to release the names, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Media Access Control addresses associated with each of the Internet connections," says the story. "The RIAA is likely to use the names and addresses to send settlement letters to students before it tries to proceed with a lawsuit."

Ken Frasier, the interim CTO at UW-Madison, has spoken up against the ruling however stating what many know; that IP adresses do not necessarily lead directly to people, especially if unprotected wireless is involved.

"Students share Internet ports and computers, and some IP addresses may lead to common areas such as labs," said Frazier in the story.

Source:
P2Pnet

In an announcement this morning, the Canadian government stated that they will be joining the U.S. WTO complaint against China over copyright infringement and intellectual property protection.

The government said they will be a "third party" in the complaint which was announced earlier this month.

The Department of Foreign Affairs claims that Canada's participation is based on "concerns expressed by Canadian stakeholders on a range of issues related to China’s intellectual property rights regime."

Michael Geist, however, does not agree with the Department's claims. He points out that China only imported $13 million dollars worth of Canadian culture, which is 0.5% of total Canadian culture exports. This fact alone leaves little reasoning behind the coalition except perhaps that Canada has succumbed to U.S. pressure, says Geist.

Although the EU declined to join the complaint when it was filed sources say now that it will, along with Japan, will join the complaints in the coming weeks. We hope this is on their own accord and not because of U.S. pressure.

Source:
Geist

According to ATRACLife, the new Sony B100 series of portable MP3 players will kill off two of Sony's mainsteads, the ATRAC codec and the SonicStage file transfer application.

SonicStage, the bane of all previous Sony players, was very unpopular, and with the release of the B100 series, it will be gone. The same goes for the ATRAC format (Sony's competitor to MP3, WMA, and AAC) which was also offered on all previous players.

Shipping in May and with price unknown at the moment, the series will offer capacities of 1 GB to 4GB and FM radio and recording. It will also be able to play the above mentioned formats.

Source:
MP3newswire

Although new Nine Inch Nails content has been available online and free at their website, NIN.com for some time now, the band made an interesting announcement on their website yesterday. The brief announcement stated that the band was releasing three new tracks for download but that they would be available via torrent protocol and that the torrents had been uploaded to The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay is and has been, one of the largest and most popular public torrent trackers and the defiance of the admins to bullying by the US entertainment industry has made the site a symbol of the torrent community.

The three songs released are "Capital G", "My Violent Heart" and "Me, Im Not", and NIN's decision to upload these tracks shows that at least one band understands the importance of torrents in reaching out to their target audiences.

Source:
Slyck

Ohio University has finally decided that something had to be done about their P2P problems. After being tagged as the top piracy school by the RIAA last month, the University has decided to completely ban P2P from their campus network.

Starting tonight, the campus IT will begin to monitor for all P2P activity and if they find any computer engaging in file sharing, the computer will be taken offline until the student contacts the school's service desk.

"Left unchecked, P2P applications can consume all available network bandwidth," said Ohio University CIO Brice Bible. "In fact this happened at Ohio University years ago when the original Napster file-sharing program became widely available."

So far, Ohio University's actions seem to be a solo effort as other schools have yet to try an effort such as banning P2P. Some other schools did not rule out that option for the future however.

Some schools were afraid that by throttling P2P, they would also be stopping legitimate P2P from occuring. As one spokesman said "We're sort of stuck in the middle on this issue," he said. "We're getting pressure from the RIAA and being bombarded with preliminary notices, but there's nothing we can do other than pointing students to our acceptable use policy. If we try to kill off the Azureus traffic, we run the risk of throttling legitimate P2P traffic, too."

Yesterday, Apple confirmed that they had plans to bring full-length feature films to its iTunes store in Europe before the end of 2007.

The plans were confirmed by Apple's vice president Pascal Cagni, who is charge of the European branch of the company. Mr Cagni also confirmed that the company was launching the iPhone in Europe during the 4th quarter 2007.

In other Apple news, a company executive said Apple was going to add at least 70 outlets inside other retail stores in Europe by the end of the year.

Source:
MacNN

Yesterday, Fuh Yuan and Wal-Mart both denied that the story reported earlier, that millions of dollars of HD players had been purchased by Wal-Mart for sale at $299 USD, and that there had been no deal made yet.

Fuh Yuan issued a statement stating that Wal-Mart was shopping around searching for a mass of HD-DVD players but there had been no deal made, nor a price set.

Wal-Mart only gave a brief denial of the reports, which lead analysts to suggest that Wal-Mart was indeed a supporter of HD-DVD and that they were searching for a mass amount of players in the format.

We may not know where Wal-Mart stands until the holidays or even beyond and for now the retailer will continue to sell players and discs in both formats.

On the manufacturing end, Toshiba said it will continue to license its HD-DVD technology to Chinese manufacturers in the hopes the prices of HD-DVD players will continue to plummet. Toshiba's current entry level bargain player, sold at $399 USD, is widely considered to be sold at below cost price, and $399 is still pretty expensive and aimed mostly at early adopters not the casual consumer.

After almost a decade of being the top video game maker, Sony now finds itself in third behind Nintendo and Microsoft and a turn around is obviously necessary.

Yesterday, in the latest string of developments in an effort to turn the company around it was revealed that PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi would leave the company by the end of June.

Sony expects to have a large $2 billion USD loss for its video game unit, fueled by slow sales for the PS3 and high operating costs for the console.

Kutaragi wil be replaced by Kazuo Hirai, the president of the worldwide PlayStation unit. Hirai is considered an ally of CEO Howard Stringer, the man who many feel asked for the resignation of Kutaragi.

Stringer and Kutaragi had a few disagreements over the years, and according to the Wall Street Journal, one of those issues was Kutaragi's lack of communication with other Sony officials. The disagreement eventually lead to Kutaragi losing control of daily operations. Further angering officials, Kutaragi went far over budget for PS3 development costs and questioned Sony's manufacturing practices.

Source:
BetaNews

Thanks to a three-year old company named Intent MediaWorks, P2P users will be able to download free and legal music via their regular P2P applications such as Limewire or Shareaza. What is the catch? When you start the download, a pop-up will appear asking the downloader to view an ad (either text or video) and in return they weill obtain the music legally and for free.

MediaWorks has done extensive testing on how to embed pop-ups in music and video files unobtrusively and the company says that surveys show that 60 percent of users are willing to endure the ads.

"Consumers don't want to rip people off," says Les Ottolenghi, president and co-founder of MediaWorks. "They just want to get music as easily as possible."

For the past few months, MediaWorks has been seeding P2P networks at a very fast pace. In February alone, its media content was downloaded 1.7 million times and the company expects that number to increase to 10 million by December.

For every 1000 views, it costs the advertiser $5.80 and usually $30 or more for videos, creating a healthy revenue stream for all involved. MediaWorks shares the money with artists and the record labels behind the artists which can choose to promote thier own artists in the ads.

In an astonishing announcement by the MPAA at the LexisNexis conference this week, Dan Glickman has stated that the movie studios have fully committed to interoperable DRM and believes that consumers should be able to play their legally purchased video material on any item in their household. Glickman also surprisingly announced that a plan was in the works to allow consumers to rip their DVD's for use on home media servers and iPods.

The plan is still in early stages but is a huge shift from the normal movie industry mindset. Throughout the speech Glickman stressed that DRM must be in use but should not restrict the consumer.

He also stated that the movie studios were willing to have a technology summit where content producers, IT companies and academics could work as a team to get DRM issues resolved. He made a point to show off Movie Labs, a $30 million dollar project funded by the studios as proof that all in involved where committed to inoperability.

In response to questions about the ripping of DVDs, which is currently illegal under the DMCA, Glickman answered that consumers would legally be allowed to rip their movies but suggested that some form of DRM would still be necessary. He did not elaborate.

Earlier this week, Ty Roberts, the CTO of Gracenote, made the bold claim that the music industry was "about to cave in the next six months" on the issue of DRM in music downloads.

Although Mr Roberts believes, and rightfully so, that it requires less "friction" now to get illegal content than it is to acquire the legal versions he also feels that the complete loss of DRM may not be so good for the music industry in the long run.

Paul Jessop, CTO of the RIAA, agreed with Mr Robert's latter statement as he stated that most consumers would see an open format download as a free download. He did however say that the RIAA wants the hassles of DRM to be sorted soon. The interoperability issues of DRM have been harming everyone in the business and the industry is calling out for an open DRM format or even the abandonment of the technology as a whole.

Jessop also said he did not care what decisions the labels make in the future in relation to DRM but he does see DRM in single downloads ending soon. DRM however, will still be necessary in monthly subscription services like Napster, he noted.

So far, flexible or open DRMs have not yet been widely developed and so interoperability will continue to be a problem at least in the near future.

Anyone who has recently wanted to purchase a Nintendo Wii has almost certainly had problems finding one. The company is hoping to change that. According to a Nintendo spokesperson, the company plans to bump up production for the Wii in an effort to meet the high demand for the console.

"For the first three months of this year we have been producing one million hardware units per month. We are increasing the manufacturing capacity and forecast to ship 14 million in this fiscal year to our distributors and retail customers globally," the spokesperson said.

"We have put solid production plans in place to ensure a steady flow of product through 2007. We are constantly replenishing Wii supplies however with such high demand, stock is still flying off shelves so consumers should continue to be in touch with their local retailers to confirm when new stock is arriving."

These plans came after Nintendo's year-end financial results announced that 5.84 million Wii consoles had been sold since launch. Although that is a very high number, demand still continues to outstrip supply in many key markets.

When asked to comment about the shortages the spokesperson had this to say: "We are increasing our production capacity of Wii units, but with the unprecedented demand for the console we can’t predict that at this time."

After Blu-ray disc sales hit 1 million on Monday, the Blu-ray camp was quick to claim they were building an insurmountable lead.

Today however, the HD-DVD Promotional Grouphas disputed the Blu-ray claims, stating that 998,059 HD-DVD discs have been sold. The 2000 disc difference is certainly not an insurmountable lead.

"As more HD DVD titles hit the market and as prices for HD DVD hardware continue to drop below the $400 mark, we're seeing more equal week to week movie sales ratios between the formats," a group spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also claimed that presales for "The Matrix Trilogy" and BBC's "Planet Earth" showed strength for the format.

The group also took issue with the fact that the Blu-ray groups include the PlayStation 3 in overall hardware sales. They claim that when "true set-top boxes" are compared, HD-DVD holds a 4-to-1 margin over its rival.

"Bottom line is that HD DVD is staying focused across the board on creating great products at great prices," the spokesperson added.

Source:
BetaNews

Yesterday, Yahoo! Music launched the first legal lyrics website, thanks to a licensing deal with Gracenote, the company famous for CDDB. According to the press release, lyrics for over 400,000 songs from the Big Four will be initially available.

Although this is obviously not the first lyrics site available online, this is the first official and legal effort. Current lyric sites are known to have questionable advertising models such as spyware and many of the lyrics are incorrect.

"The highly fragmented music publishing industry (not record companies) owns the right to publish lyrics and has been very slow to pull together and bless a way of legally distributing them on the Internet. As a result, lyrics have been relegated to rogue sites riddled with popup ads, inconsistent formatting, and often incorrect transcriptions," remarked Ian Rogers, general manager of Yahoo! Music.

BMG, EMI, Sony, Universal, Warner and tons of independent music publishers have all opened their catalogues to Gracenote which is making its library available for free for the first time since they started building the library in 2005.

"Now lyrics take their rightful place next to artist bios, discographies, videos, and downloads. All free to you, dear music lover. So check out the lyrics to hits like I’m The One, Start!, Freewill, or even Michelle (that’s right, we have The Beatles)," added Rogers.

George Foreman has introduced a new grill for his line, and this latest one is iPod-ready.

The aptly named iGrill is a stand-up grill with a 10-watt speaker set that can play music while the main grill cooks your food. There is a USB port so the iGrill will also work with most digital audio devices besides the iPod.

The grill is already available and holds a $150 retail price.

Source:
Electronistica

According to reports by Gizmodo and Arstechnica, the releases of Samsung's 50 and 58 inch wireless HD-plasma displays will be delayed by Hollywood.

A Samsung senior marketing manager, Bill Dickey explained that the sets would be ready to ship earlier than their September street date if it werent for Hollywood's concerns about the security of the wireless transmissions. Apparently the market is ready for the product but the movie studios are not.

The movie studios have said they would not have an issue with the displays if they would output lower resolution video. They would not have an issue with 720p but 1080p is another story.

Of course Samsung would like to have 1080p output on thier TVs but the studios are afraid that the "wireless transmission methods used for the displays—which uses 802.11n—may not be tight enough to keep people from recording the HD content stripped of its DRM."

The movie studios need to approve of Samsung's wireless system by June if the company hopes to have the TVs ready by thier target date of September. "We have the technology, we are just waiting on approval and are currently negotiating for approval for June," said Mr Dickey.

In a seemingly ridiculous promotional effort for Blu-ray, Sony Europe has created a new website entitled "The Museum of Low Resolution".

The interactive site shows us Sony's vision of the future, a future where Blu-ray is the only high def format, and a world where low resolution TV is a long forgotten memory worthy of its own museum.

If you visit the site you can tour three virtual "museum exhibits", the "Time Tunnel," "The Science Room," and "The Art of HD."

"The Art of HD" gives a visual explanation of what Blu-ray is through a few interactive flash based exhibits that explain the disc's resolution power and storage capacity.

It is an interesting website if you are curious to check it out although be prepared for Blu-ray propaganda.

Visit the Museum Here

Source:
HD-Digest

In a follow up to our Folding@home story here, the latest stats for the project show that over 250,000 PlayStation 3 users have now signed up. The number is very impressive considering the project has only been active for one month.

Stanford University's research now reports that they are enjoying computing power of 700 teraflops in a single moment, with 400 of those coming from PS3 owners.

Standford also reported that the console has helped bring recognition to the project and that PC contributions have increased 20 percent.

"The PS3 turnout has been amazing, greatly exceeding our expectations and allowing us to push our work dramatically forward," said Vijay Pande, associate professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home program lead.

"Thanks to PS3, we have performed simulations in the first few weeks that would normally take us more than a year to calculate. We are now gearing up for new simulations that will continue our current studies of Alzheimer's and other diseases."

The project also released a software update yesterday, version 1.1. The new update "improves visibility of donor locations on the globe, folding calculation speed and protein viewing. There's also additional language support, help screen hints, and improved donor-name length and character handling."

In China, a bootleg DVD of Spider-man 3 has hit the streets with a $1 price tag, premiering 2 weeks before the movie even debuts in the US.

This latest report is sure to anger the MPAA and American movie distributors especially because the movie reportedly cost $500 million dollars to make.

Earlier this month, the US filed complaints against China with the WTO claiming the China was not doing enough to punish movie pirates and that their restrictions on media imports were violating trade rules. China criticized the move and the Vice Premier, Wu Yi, threatened that the complaints would "badly damage" cooperation, and emphasized that China was doing alot to enforce copyright protections.

"The United States Trade Representative, the USTR, has totally ignored the massive strides China has made," Wu told an intellectual property forum in Beijing.

China did however say that they would formulate an anti-piracy action plan and that they had arrested 998 people last year for copyright infringement.

"Over the last few years, the amount of manpower and work that China has put into protecting intellectual property rights and the results that have been achieved, have been unprecedented," Wu said.

"Every year we have nationwide events to protect intellectual property and we have always kept up the pressure on the pirates. The effects of this clean-up get better every year."

Sony however, has so far claimed that the DVDs are a hoax and are really just copies of Spider-man 2. In a statement Sony reported that "Contrary to news reports about stolen copies of 'Spider-Man 3' being sold illegally on the streets in China, our investigation in China has revealed no case of the film being pirated to date...After an initial investigation of online sites worldwide, we have so far found no pirated copies of 'Spider-Man 3' on the Internet."

In an update to our article here, HP has hit Acer with four new counts of patent infringement adding to the 5 counts from the previous suit which was filed last month.

In an effort to protect its 20 percent share of the global PC market, HP added the new counts which include alledged infringements "covering power and heat management, regulation of the data bus, and video scaling".

According to IDC, Acer is on track to replace Dell for #2 in market share and has been experiencing large industry growth in the past year, growth larger than its competitors.

It is obvious that HP is doing anything they can to protect their market share lead from Acer and the new suit asks that all sales of Acer machines with alledged patent infringements be stopped completely. HP is also asking for a large cash damages sum and with such giants fighting it seems this dispute will drag on for a long time.

Source:
Engadget

Reports have been coming in from many sources claiming that Wal-Mart is ordering 2 million high definition players produced by the Great Wall Corporation in China and developed by TDK in an effort to sell inexpenisve next generation players. The reports claim the players will be sold for under $300 USD however the type of next generation player is still up for debate.

A translation of the Chinese reports indicate that the players are “Blu-ray (or blue light) HD DVD players" which is confusing as both formats use blue or violet lasers. Until there is an English announcement we may not know which format the players are intended for.

Wal-Mart spokesperson Mellissa O’Brien would not comment on the apparent deal between the retailer and its Chinese manufacturing partners, but did offer to Home Media Magazine, “[Most] of the shoppers asking about and purchasing either Blu-ray or HD DVD are already pretty savvy technically about both — they are the kind of consumer that absolutely wants the very best and latest in quality that's available. It's not quite yet a product the average shopper is attune too, but we anticipate that will change very soon as prices continue to come down.”

Yesterday, Beijing's No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ordered the Chinese arm of Yahoo! to pay 210,000 yuan ($27,000 USD) to the record labels that had brought the suit forward claiming that the search engine infringed copyrights by allowing links to pirated music on its engine.

Included were such giants as Warner Music Group, Universal and BMG.

After the decision was handed down, the company stated that they would be appealing, arguing that "it was already doing all it could to protect intellectual property, and shouldn't be held liable for content on third-party sites".

In a similar case last year, the court ruled in favor of the search engine Baidu.com and so the Yahoo decision was somewhat surprising.

However, the court decision did admit that Yahoo wasn't completely to blame for the infringement, despite the fact that their links helped aid the piracy process.

The case was filed by the IFPI in January and after the decision was handed down, the group praised the court:

"This judgment will boost the growth of a licensed digital music business in China and provide better protection for intellectual property in this vast, exciting market," chairman and CEO John Kennedy said.

"The judgment gives our members the legal basis to require all music search engines in China to remove infringing links from their service - which we will do," he continued.

Today, the German media conglomerate Bertlesmann settled with Warner Music for over $110 million.

The agreed settlement is related to Bertlesmann's involvement with the original Napster that was infamous for being the beginning of P2P and mass music piracy. In 2000, Bertlesmann invested heavily in Napster and has been paying for that decision ever since.

In the past year they have settled with Universal for $61 million and EMI for a undisclosed amount.

Source:
BetaNews

Rumors have been swirling for weeks that internet giant, Amazon will be the next major name to enter the world of unprotected music sales.

Amazon hopes to open the MP3 download store in May and many analysts see the retailer being the only company that can truly compete with iTunes.

According to a recent report in the UK's Times Online, Amazon has approached "all the music majors in the past fortnight" in hopes to launch its store by May. Amazon hopes to launch by May because that is when iTunes will begin selling DRM-free music from EMI and Amazon would like to launch with DRM-free music from EMI as well in order to compete.

Although Amazon's heart is in the right place, they will have a tough time competing with Apple. Apple has begun renegotiating with the Big Four and industry executives have stated that Apple will have the upper hand in pressing for DRM-free music due to their immense market share. Although the labels keep a strict facade about DRM, industry sources have noted that the rest of the Big Four following in EMI's footsteps is just "a matter of time."

Source:
Arstechnica

According to Home Media Research, Blu-Ray has become the first high definition format to sell one million discs, an incredible milestone that was achieved in under a year. Also released in the figures from HMR was that about 70 percent of high def movies sold in the first quarter of 2007 were Blu-Ray discs.

March sales were a hefty 75 percent for Blu-ray according to HMR.

Industry analysts have suggested that those numbers are due to the fact that there are an increasing number of blockuster movies on Blu-Ray disc, most of which are only on BD and not on HD-DVD.

“Sales of Blu-ray Disc titles have taken off since the first of the year,” said Andy Parsons, Chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association’s U.S. Promotion Committee and Senior Vice President New Product Development at Pioneer Electronics. “Blu-ray Discs have been outselling HD DVD by more than two to one since the beginning of the year and the gap is steadily widening. It’s exactly what we’ve said all along would happen - the strong support for Blu-ray among movie studio and equipment manufacturers means that consumers have more choices when it comes to players and titles. And they’re choosing Blu-ray by an ever-increasing margin.”

In an interesting announcement, Sony boss Phil Harrison has stated that Sony would like to open up the PlayStation 3 further to independent game developers in the near future.

"I fully support the notion of game development at home using powerful tools available to anyone," Harrison said in an interview.

"We were one of the first companies to recognise this in 1996 with Net Yaroze on PS1. It's a vital, crucial aspect of the future growth of our industry."

Harrison admits that nowadays the avenues into homebrew are not as open as they once were and that is because the processes "are largely closed by the nature of the videogame systems themselves being closed".

"So, if we can make certain aspects of PS3 open to the independent game development community, we will do our industry a service by providing opportunities for the next generation of creative and technical talent," he added.

This is certainly a different approach than Sony has taken with their PSP console. Many homebrew developers for the PSP have often been struck down by firmware updates by Sony hoping to lock out hackers and pirates.

We hope to see something good coming out of this announcement in the future.

A few weeks back we reported that Sony had dropped the price of the the PSP in North America from $200 to $170 USD and it seems in the aftermath of that decision, Sony is deciding to drop the price of European PSPs as well.

Sony's plans are to cut the price from GBP 149.99 to 129.99 and EUR 199.99 to 169.99, starting May 4th.

In addtion, the price of Platinum titles such as Tekken and Killzone will drop to GBP 14.99.

"PSP is unique and is constantly evolving. It offers the widest palette of mobile entertainment, from gaming to video, music, photos and Internet," said Sony UK managing director Ray Maguire.

"But now the exciting possibility of connecting remotely to PlayStation 3 makes PSP more relevant than ever. So what better time to offer a brand new price point, and the launch of five new Platinum titles?"

Source:
Gi.biz

Hew Raymond Griffiths, the leader of the warez group "Drink or Die" and who has already spent 3 years fighting extradition to the US from his home in Australia, has pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement” and “criminal copyright infringement” and could possibly face 10 years in prison along with a $500,000 fine.

Griffiths, who had never even visited the US became the first foreigner to be extradicted to the US to face charges of copyright infringement. He had spent 3 years in an Australian prison fighting the extradition, but a court in Australia ruled against him earlier this year.

Back in 1999, Griffiths proclaimed that he was in control of more than 20 of top warez servers worldwide and made the bold claim that he would never be caught.

In 2001, he and a few others were busted during US Custom raids under the banner "Operation Buccaneer" and Griffiths was identified as the leader of DrinkOrDie.

In Feburary he was arraigned in court and yesterday pleaded guilty to the charges against him.

Source:
TorrentFreak

In the past week, the Xbox 360 Elite has been opened up and dissected and experts have checked every aspect of the new console.

During this inspection, the new 120 GB HDD was checked and it turns out Microsoft is overcharging for the drive, and overcharging alot. The drive is a Fujitsu MHW2120BH 2.5" laptop drive and doing a quick google search exposes that the drive sells for $100 average.

Im sure Microsoft can justify the extra $80 they are charging the consumer for the drive, but the question is, will we buy their reasoning?

Source:
Xb360fb

Fastmac, an optical drive maker for Macs, announced today that they had begun shipping the first and only Blu-Ray optical drive upgrade "for Apple's PowerBook, iBook, and MacBook Pro notebook systems".

The new slimline, slot loading drive is compatible with standard DVD and CD media and will also provide up to 50GB of storage per disc.

The new drive is priced at $800 and requires Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later.

Source:
MacNN

For the past few months, Polish authorities have mounted an operation against a file sharing DC++ network situated on the campus of Koszalin University of Technology.

On Wednesday, police officers assisted by ZPAV, the Polish branch of the IFPI and MPAA, raided the campus, and seized one main PC running the DC++ hub software, 10 laptops and 60 hard drives. According to the police, an astonishing 35,000 GB of pirated movies, music and software was available to download from the network.

The three administrators of the hub, students of the college, were arrested, and more charges seem iminent.

In the last 6 months, ZPAV claims to have caught 267 uploaders, offering a total of 778,000 music tracks for download on file-sharing networks.

Source:
P2Pnet

Today, Sony released the first usage statistics for the PlayStation 3's online service, the PlayStation Network.

According to Dave Karraker, Sony Computer Entertainment America's senior director of public relations, the Network now boasts more than 1.3 million users worldwide and of that number, about 600,000 come from North America. In total, about 3.7 million pieces of content have been downloaded from the PlayStation Network since launch but Sony did not reveal how many of those "pieces" were games.

Of course, the PlayStation Network cannot compete with Xbox Live yet, but this strong start implies that perhaps the free Sony Network will be able to compete in the future with the pay-for service from Microsoft. To date, Xbox Live has 6 million users who have downloaded 25 million Xbox Live Arcade games from Xbox Live Marketplace.

Source:
Gamespot

Jon Lech Johansen, known on the internet as "DVD Jon" for his infamous cracking of anti-piracy protection on DVDs has posted on his blog that he is searching for a few talented coders that would be interested in working for DoubleTwist Ventures. To date, the company has reversed engineered Apple's FairPlay DRM system and it seems they are looking to do more in the near future.

Johansen's blog said the company is looking for a "reverse engineering specialist to work on DRM interoperability technology and the company also wants to hire a "senior code monkey to work on audio/video products".

DoubleTwist is working on interoperability technology that would allow users to play music bought from Apple's iTunes store on any portable device not just an iPod.

This new effort is an interesting development and one that we will keep a close eye on.

Source:
IW

On Thursday, the Financial Times reported that Sony was reconsidering its pricing strategy for the PlayStation 3 in hopes of accelerating sales in North America and Japan.

Their article quotes Sony president Ryoji Chubachi as saying, “We are re-examining our [PS3] budgeting process in terms of pricing and volume. Sales assumptions change and the market is competitive. We are in the midst of revisiting our strategy for the PS3.”

However, after those comments were made, Bloomberg News quoted a Sony spokesperson refuting the comments. “PS3 prices and shipment plans for the future should be determined by market trends and competition. Sony currently doesn't have any specific plan to cut the PlayStatio 3's price,” said company spokeswoman Mami Imada in Tokyo.

At this point, with PlayStation 3s being sold at considerable losses, it seems impossible to drop the prices, even to increase sales.

We hope Sony reps can all get their stories straight so there is no more confusion as to the current pricing strategy.


Source:
Dailytech

According to Sony America, the European launch of the PlayStation 3 has constrained supplies to North American retailers.

Although the company stated that PS3 sales were up 2 percent for the month, they added, "We continued to find ourselves supply constrained in March due primarily to the shift in manufacturing focus to the PS3 PAL version to support the launch of the system in Europe."

The Xbox 360 outsold the PS3 by over 70,000 units but for the month, its sales were down 12 percent. The Wii finished with double the sales of the PS3 but saw its sales fall by 22 percent.

In non next-gen news, the Playstation 2 outsold all the the next gen consoles, and both the Nintendo DS and the PSP sold very well for the month.

"March 2007 showed a 24 per cent increase in retail dollars generated year-over-year for the PlayStation brand in North America with total sales of USD 447 million, due in part to the addition of the PS3 platform as well as the strong launch performance of God of War II for PS2 at retail," the company's statement reads.

"On the software front, we were pleased to see sales increases from February for both the PSP and PS2. PS2 software showed a 29 per cent increase with the launch of God of War II and PSP software demonstrated a 13 per cent jump."

Although Sony CEO Howard Stringer recently called the European launch of the PlayStation 3 a success, sales around the UK have been dropping and in response several prominent UK retailers have decided to drop the price of the PS3 to as low as £387.87, almost £40 less than the suggested retail price.

“PS3 performed well pre-launch and the first week of release, but since then sales have dropped considerably,” said Gameseek.co.uk boss Stephen Staley. “I am sure the deal will help matters. I personally believe the cuts are down to overstocking from launch. Credit goes to Sony for supplying all of the demand, however this has left most retailers with a lot of stock and with the consoles costing around £400, you can imagine it’s not healthy for any business to have a lot of PS3 consoles gathering dust in a warehouse."

“We are obviously selling the console at a loss to try and attract new customers to our site. We are sure the PS3 is going to be big business for us over the next eight years so to get a good foothold in this market is essential," Staley added.

The retailers are hoping that these price cuts will help spark some sales growth of the PS3s that are not leaving store shelves as quick as they would hope.

Starting on April 29th, consumers can sign up for a new music download subscription service started by Circuit City and Napster. The service, entitled "Circuit City + Napster" will give users access to Napster's unlimited content service as well as offer 99 cent single song downloads.

The service will work just like Napster does now (unlimited downloads for $15 a month) but now, just like its main competitor, iTunes, users can purchase prepaid cards for tracks in bundles of 15, 25 and 60 or purchase single tracks for 99 cents. These tracks are yours forever, unlike the Napster tracks which are no longer functional when you stop paying for the monthly subscription.

"Our goal with music and movies is to excite and inspire our customers to fully enjoy their portable and in-home electronics, and we're thrilled to enter this strategic relationship with Napster," said Irynne V. MacKay, Circuit City's senior vice president and general merchandise manager for entertainment. "Circuit City + Napster will offer our customers a new avenue to find, share and delight in music. Increasingly, consumers are turning to the digital environment for entertainment and this new service will give our customers easy access to the content they want, when and how they choose to enjoy it." Read more...

As reported last month, Take Two sued Jack Thompson in an effort to win a restraining order against him.

According to last boss, Jack Thompson has settled with Take Two, and agreed to the following terms:

-He will not sue or threaten to sue to block sale or distribution of any game published by Take Two or its subsidiaries (i.e., Rockstar)

-He will not communicate to Take Two or anyone doing business with T2 (like, say Wal-Mart) any accusation that the company committed any wrongdoing by selling its games. Thompson is not restricted from criticizing the content of T2 games, nor is he prevented from acting as counsel in lawsuits brought against Take Two by other parties

-He will make any future contacts with T2 through its attorneys

On the other end, Take Two dismissed their claim and dropped the contempt of court charge against Mr Thompson.

It seems for the time being, gamers can play their violent games in peace.

Source:
Last Boss

For the first time in the Czech Republic, a man has been sentenced to prison time for illegal music file sharing.

According to officials, the man caused damage of about one million crowns ($50,000 USD) and for his crimes he received a 7 month sentence.

"We have uprooted the myth that the Internet is an anonymous environment. This simply is not true. Everybody who gets on the Internet actually becomes...a specific, non-anonymous participant," Jaromir Soukup from the Czech branch of the IFPI said.

Petra Zikovska, the head of the Czech branch of the IFPI stated that the group has been fighting against unauthorized music file sharing for over a year.

Zikovska also stated that on April 11th, the police, in cooperation with the IFPI, raided the homes of 13 suspected file-sharers and seized 20 PCs and hundreds of CDs so it seems more sentencing may be coming in the near future.

Soukup said that those who "violate copyright face up to two years in prison and a fine twice as high as the damage caused."

He also mentioned that the sentencing should help the public learn that unauthorized P2P file sharing is illegal as he understands that many do not know that it is.

On Tuesday, Panasonic issued a firmware update, to v2.0, for its DMP-BD10 Blu-ray player which adds support for Dolby True HD and DTS-HD High-Resolution audio formats.

According to Panasonic, the update adds the following fixes and enhancements:

-Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio are supported. A new decoder is incorporated to support the latest high quality multi-channel surround sound formats.

-Functions of EZ Sync(North America) or VIErA Link(Europe/UK, Oceania) are enhanced.

-You can now seamlessly operate multiple connected components with one remote control.

-Improved playability and stability

Its good to see that firmware upgrades are coming out for next gen players, and we hope to see more upgrades in the near future.

Source:
HD-Digest

With Sony's latest system update, released today, PlayStation 3 gamers will soon be able to download and play PSone titles on their new console.

The firmware update, to version 1.7, introduces new technology that which will enable the console to play PSone titles bought from the PlayStation Store. These titles were only currently playable on the PSP but that is set to change. Also included in the update is the ability for save data for the PSone to be used on the PSP, and improved support for vibration functions on older console peripherals, including the Logitech GT-Force Pro steering wheel.

The update is for all owners, including those in Europe which had not had the option to download any PSone titles until today.

Sony also released a firmware update for the PSP, version 3.40. A new security system will force PSP owners to upgrade to the new firmware update if they want to continue playing emulated PSone games on their handheld.

Source:
Gamesindustry.biz

According to the BBC, Microsoft has designed a new color barcode which can store extra information and be scanned using camera phones and webcams.

The new barcodes, entitled "High Capacity Colour Barcodes" will appear next to the current UPC codes on upcoming DVDs and Xbox 360 titles.

Research engineering director Gavin Jancke described HCCB as "more of a 'partner' barcode", adding, "The UPC barcodes will always be there. Ours is more of a niche barcode where you want to put a lot of information in a small space."

The barcode itself will include 8 colored triangles which can hold as much as two times the information that a UPC code can. Consumers can use their webcams or camera phones to scan the new barcodes and access the data which can include the URL of a website offering downloadable content for the game or even an email address.

Jancke also added, "The capability of these new bar codes to store more data in a smaller space should provide a rich resource for the industry and consumers alike,"

"The new code offers several advantages over existing black-and-white bar codes most people are accustomed to seeing on product packages, enabling new consumer experiences, more visual appeal where aesthetics are important and the ability to incorporate advanced security features."

Today, the RIAA released its year-end shipment stats for 2006 and the results were not surprising. Physical media shipments declined again while downloads continued to skyrocket.

Overall revenue declined again as sales of digital media failed to recoup the losses of falling CD sales.

For the year 2006, the RIAA reports that manufacturers shipped 553.2 million units which included all physical media like CDs, singles and vinyl albums as well as music videos. That number is a 13% decline from last year and almost a 50% decline since 2000.

Digital sales however, continue to be a huge success for the music industry. The RIAA reported a 27.6% increase in sales from 2005, and if you were to remove mobile downloads such as ringtones, the increase is a hefty 63%.

Although those numbers are nowhere near the growth of 166% from 2004 to 2005, the industry is still very pleased with the numbers.

"Today's music marketplace has challenges but it also offers reason for hope and optimism," said RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol. "The appetite for music is as strong as ever and a digital marketplace now worth nearly $2 billion has emerged virtually overnight."

We reported a couple days ago that users were reporting playback issues with a few of Sony's new DVD releases .

Sony has now reported that they have fixed the glitches on the releases Casino Royale, The Pursuit of Happyness and Stranger Than Fiction.

According to Sony, the problem was due to an update of its ARccOS copy-protection system which Sony has been using on all its DVDs for the last two years.

“Recently, an update that was installed on approximately 20 titles was found to cause an incompatibility issue with a very small number of DVD players (Sony has received complaints on less than one thousandth of one percent of affected discs shipped),” the company said in a statement. “Since then, the ARccOS system has once again been updated, and there are no longer any playability problems.”

Sony reported that they will be replacing all "broken" discs as well. All that is necessary is to call their Customer Service at 800.860.2878 and ask for further instructions.

Future buyers of Sony DVDs should be warned however that ARccOS is known to have compatibility problems with some models of Sony, Toshiba and Harman Kardon DVD players.

According to handset component makers, the manufacturing of Google handsets have begun and shipments of the phone are expected to officially commence by Christmas 2007. The makers also said they expect the shipment volume to reach as high as one million units.

The makers pointed out a few features of the phone. The phone will "support Texas Instruments' (TI) 3G platform and EDGE, pointed out the makers. The handset, however, will not feature GPS functionality. The device will also feature built-in G-mail and Google search."

Industry watchers also expect Google to partner with European provider Orange for the launch of the handset. Google has been in communication with other service providers as well, but nothing is set in stone yet, according to sources.

Source:
Digitimes

Yesterday, Pioneer debuted its Blu-ray Disc Combo drive model, the BDC-S02 in Beijing. The player is set for immediate launch in China and soon the rest of the world at a very affordable price of $299 USD.

According to Pioneer High Fidelity Taiwan, "The BDC-S02 can playback high-definition movies on BD-ROM, BD-R (recordable), BD-R DL (single-sided double-layer), BD-RE (rewritable) and BD-RE DL discs as well as common DVD and CD discs".

This is good to see that Blu-ray players are starting to come down in price and hopefully the competition will bring forth even more price drops.

Source:
Digitimes

Just hours after the worst mass shooting in US history occurred on the campus of VT (our hearts go out to the families of the victims), Jack Thompson found his way onto Fox News and blamed the shooting on violent video games.

Be reminded that this was hours before the suspect was even identified.

We dont have exact quotes of what Thompson said, but watching the video you can plainly see that many of his comments are misleading and some are just false.

It is saddening to see that Thompson is using a massive tragedy to pawn off his personal agenda.

Watch the video here


Source:
Kotaku

Thank you to senior member Handsom for the heads up on this story.

Today, Sony and SanDisk jointly announced that they are developing a new solid state storage media for video recording. The cards, SxS memory cards, will have data transfer rates of 2.5 gigabits per second and will benefit from space and weight reduction thanks to their Express Card specifications.

"Sony and SanDisk share the goal of providing leadership in high-performance, high-capacity recording solutions for professional video," said Eli Harari, Chairman and CEO of SanDisk. "I am proud of the close cooperation we have had with Sony over the years, and I look forward to the exciting new products that SxSTM memory cards will enable."

In the announcement, Sony said they will adopt the new memory cards into their professional camcorders "XDCAM EXTM" series later this year.

So far there is no word on pricing or an exact launch date, but they should be on shelves by the end of 2007.

Source:
Techspot

Today, the US Department of Justice announced another guilty plea in connection with "Operation D-Elite", the first operation to ever target individuals who commited copyright infringment on a BitTorrent tracker site.

Sam Kuonen, 24, pleaded guilty to two counts of felony conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and "criminal copyright infringement in violation of the Family Entertainment Copyright Act." Mr. Kuonen could possibly spend five years in prison and/or a fine of $250,000.

Mr. Kuonen’s guilty plea was the fifth conviction connected with Operation D-Elite and the operation is not yet finished.

Mr. Kuonen was one of the main uploaders on Elite Torrents and his conviction, along with the four before his (admins and other uploaders) are a warning from the government that torrents arent as safe as you imagined.

Source:
Zeropaid

Former Electronic Arts veterans who worked on such hit titles as Need for Speed, FIFA and the 007 series have announced that they have formed a new development team entitled Jet Black Studios.

The new independent studio will focus only on Nintendo hardware, creating and liscencing new products for both the popular Wii and the DS.

"With the launch of our new studio we've brought together all the key elements to develop top games," commented co-founder and CEO Roger Freddi.

"Both the Nintendo DS and the Wii's Wi-Fi capabilities provide an advanced medium for Jet Black to bring already popular franchises to an even broader worldwide audience," he added.

Jet Black will be working with Flashman Studios a businees management firm which liscenses projects for Pixar, Warner Brothers and Sony Online.

"We are confident in the capabilities of Jet Black's exceptional team, and know our strong global alliances and years of game experience will help grow its business," said Brad Young, CEO of Flashman.

"Our proven success in cultivating the right match of intellectual property, publisher and developer will allow Jet Black to do what they do best – build great games, create inspirational ideas and develop great technology."

Speaking to the Financial Times, Sony CEO Howard Striger declared the European launch of the PlayStation 3 a success, citing that almost 800,000 units had already been sold since launch.

According to Stringer, "(USD 199m) revenue changed hands and that's probably the largest consumer electronics sale in history."

Stringer also argues that "Perhaps we lived up to the expectations in Europe in a way that perhaps we didn't in Japan", therefore helping the PS3 become a success in Europe unlike the bust it is in Japan

Stringer however also know that the console wars are nowhere near over, "The silo walls are down - we're staring across the walls at each other but we haven't quite shaken hands all the way around."

Source:
Gamesindustry.biz

After having bounties placed on thier heads by Malaysian crime bosses last month and subsequently going into hiding, the MPAA's polycarbonate sniffing dogs, Lucky and Flo, have ended their run in Malaysia and have moved north, to the Philippines.

They dogs began their raid in broad daylight at the Makati Cinema Square Mall in the Manila capital. Owners of stalls in the mall were said to be in a frenzy stashing their pirated DVDs or even locking up their stores behind steel shutters.

According to the sources, the dogs sniffed out over 300,000 pirated discs in the first hour alone.

Neil Gane, the MPAA's international senior director of operations, stated that "Lucky and Flo will be here for a considerable amount of time and we will be going all over Manila, and we are also contemplating going all over the Philippines."

"As you can see, the dogs have been very, very effective."

After the dogs helped seize millions of dollars of pirated discs in Malaysia and the bounties were placed on their heads, the dogs went into a protection program of sorts before they were recently moved to the Philippines.

However, in a shocking turn of events, Malaysian pirates, in an effort to make back the money they lost due to the dogs, have increased their porn productions and many of the new discs include child pornography.

"The pirates make more money selling pornographic discs," said Fahmi Kassim, chief enforcement officer at Johor's domestic trade ministry. Read more...

Joost, the internet TV platform has just announced that they have signed another content deal that will add more channels to their ever growing catalogue.

This latest deal is with the critically-acclaimed independent film and television producers ALL3MEDIA International, Alliance Atlantis, September Films and Wall to Wall. The deal also includes well known independent distributors IndieFlix and Shorts International.

In their press release, Joost made an interesting and very bold claim as well:

“Content creators and owners of all sizes are utilizing Joost’s high-quality, piracy-proof Internet platform.”

They can of course keep the piracy to a minimum if they keep commercials and adverts to a minimum but saying the platform is piracy-proof is too bold of a statement, especially from the creators of Kazaa.

Source:
WebTV

Barely a week after Corel issued an update to WinDVD 8 in an effort to close a security hole opened by AACS hackers, word has spread from hackers that claim the newest update has been cracked as well, and that the newest method is unstoppable.

The new method involves the Xbox 360's HD-DVD add-on drive and its ability to capture the "Volume Unique Keys" as they are read by the drive itself.

According to Arstechnica, "The latest attack vector bypasses the encryption performed by the Device Keys—the same keys that were revoked by the WinDVD update—and the so-called "Host Private Key," which as yet has not been found. This was accomplished by de-soldering the HD DVD drive's firmware chip, reading its contents, and then patching it. Once that was done, the firmware was soldered back onto the drive."

Although performing the hack is technically difficult, "arnezami", a hacker who has been at the center of AACS cracking says its unstoppable. "They cannot revoke this hack...No matter how many Private Host Keys they revoke we will still be able to get Volume IDs using patched xbox 360 HD DVD drives."

Today, Adobe announced that they will be introducing the Adobe Media Player, a desktop application that will give users the ability to play all flash videos without the need for a plug-in for your regular web browser.

The media player will giver users the ability to view flash videos offline on a full screen and will also include a "favorites" feauture that will automatically download new episodes of their favorite video podcasts.

The Adobe Media Player promises to "deliver, monetize, brand, track and protect video content" for content publishers. The Media Player will also include DRM-infested streaming encryption, content integrity protection and identity-based protection.

The Adobe Media Player should compete with Quicktime and Windows Media Player and will be available as a free beta release later this year before it is fully released by the end of the year.

Source:
Dailytech

According to the data tracker Media Create, Nintendo consoles continue to hold the top spots in Japanese sales charts.

For the week ending April 8th, sales of the Nintendo DS and DS Lite rose a staggering 28 percent to reach 110,935 units and Wii sales rose to 52,583. Another data tracker, Enterbrain, tagged total sales of the Wii in Japan at 2 million as of April 13.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Sony PSP came in third, selling 31,503 units.

Only 14,520 PlayStation 3 were sold during the week and that brings the total to 826,000. PlayStation 2 sales dropped to 14,234 units.

The Xbox 360 rounded out the market with a lowly 2963 units sold for a total of only 346,500 units sold since the console was launched in December 2005.

Source:
Gamesindustry.biz

A spokesperson for Sony has confirmed that the company is considering production of a new model of the PlayStation 3 that would include a larger HDD.

This latest comment again opens up the rumor mill that began last month when Sony filed an FCC application that includied references to an 80 GB model.

The spokesperson, Satoshi Fukuoka said the decision is "in line with our strategy as we had planned to choose models based on consumer needs".

"[the company]is considering introducing the model with a bigger hard disk" stated Fukuoka as well. He declined to comment further.

With the recent discontinuation of the 20 GB model in North America, it will be interesting to see what is in store for the PS3.

Source:
Gamesindustry.biz

In a move that will emulate the DMCA, a new copyright legislation will be coming to Canada and could possibly be introduced as soon as this spring.

A Canadian law professor, Michael Geist, suggests that the new bill is very similar to a failed bill that was introduced last year but this new edition adds tougher anti-circumvention laws and "carves out additional exceptions for educators."

The new copyright reform, whenever it comes should adress "fair use" in Canada because the current model is very limited. It only allows fair use when it is intended for "research or private study." There are a few extra exceptions such as news reporting, educational institutions, and museums and libraries, but there are no ways to use the content or even comment on it without getting a liscense from the copyright holder.

For those not familiar with the US model for "fair use", it allows allows for "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research."

The criticism and comment section are the largest exceptions to copyright law as it allows anyone to create parody video clips using protected content. Although very vague, the US model allows for a good share of flexibility, but that has also become a problem for groups who do not belive in fair use.

Lorne Michaels, the creater and producer of Saturday Night Live cant seem to understand NBC's position on YouTube.
The SNL clip "Lazy Sunday" is often credited with bringing YouTube to new heights of popularity, yet NBC's lawyers continually shoot down the benefits of having SNL clips on YouTube and therefore clips are hard to find, at least for prolonged periods of time.

Michaels however, wishes NBC would put more clips on YouTube: "YouTube has been great for us...I think it's simple for me. If the work is good, I want the most number of people to see it -- period. Anything that leads to that would be my objective."

Michael's decision makes sense considering the wild popularity of YouTube and the huge amount of views a few SNL clips have gathered, but until NBC decides to change their business model, Micheals will not get his wish.

Source:
TechDirt

Although there was a decrease of 5 percent in overall revenue in 2006, a new report by the Australian Recording Industry Association shows that there was at least an 8 percent increase in the volume of CDs sold, as compared to 2005.

The report also showed that Australians bought 3x as much digital music in 2006 as compared to 2005.

The CEO of the association, Stephen Peach explained the drop in revenue: "People continue to be interested in music, although the average value of CD sales is continuing to decline," Mr Peach said. "At a time when the CD seems to be dying, we are selling more units than ever before, although [the retailers] are needing to sell more and more CDs to earn less money."

Despite the added sales of full CDs, the sales of CD singles have dropped drastically.

"The decline in the CD single market is most likely a migration to the digital market," Mr Peach said, "but album sales on digital are still not significant.

"It still takes a long time to download, an album and people who use digital music seem to buy tracks, rather than albums."

Mr Peach also stated that sales of digital music increased over 300 percent but digital music only accounted for 5 percent of the Australian music market, nowhere near the percentages in the US and Europe.

According to the Financial Times, next week, Universal Music will begin discussions with Apple to renegotiate their licensing with iTunes. Universal is just the first of the "Big Four" to begin discussions and the other labels should begin their discussions in a few weeks.

According to the report, the music labels will ask Apple to add a subscription model to iTunes, and that Apple's decision in that matter will be a part of the negotiations to renew their music licensing agreements.

The report also suggests that a new subscription model would provide a boost in sales and bring the labels more money. Another demand of the labels is for variable song pricing, a move that would allow the labels to increase the price of more popular songs.

Apple however, argues that both those models would push the consumer back to piracy, and iTunes, which has sold over 2.5 billion songs and owns 75 percent of the legal digital music market is in a very good position to make decisions that they see fit.

"The record industry, in particular, has long been frustrated that Apple has reaped most of the profits of the burgeoning online music market through sales of its iPod player," the Financial Times writes. "By contrast, they have earned only modest royalties from digital music sales because most of the songs on iPods and other devices result from illegal download."

This week,Phillips launched "VTrack", a watermarking system that the company hopes will help analysts and law enforcement agents trace back illegally distributed materials such as movies.

The goal of the "Vtrack" is to protect content that is played over PayTV. The watermark will be so unobtrusive the company says, that viewers can fully enjoy thier movies but at the same time the watermark will provide a means to contain piracy trading.

Andrew G. Setos, president of engineering at Fox Group, stated his enthusiasm for the new technology: "We are thrilled that Philips has entered the market with a session based, forensic watermark system. Forensic watermarks have already shown their merit in PayTV applications and help our premium content from unauthorized redistribution by counterfeiters and others".

Phillips is confident in their new technology stating that it can never be seperated from the content or even modified. Phillips indicated that even after quality reduction, scaling, cropping or compression the watermark was still intact.

Source:
Dailytech

A new study has reported that Canadian and U.S. teenagers have increased their legal downloading of music as compared to the fall 2006 period.

The 13th bi-annual edition of the survey showed a few key numbers. 83 percent of teenage students download music online compared to 79 percent in fall 2006. 36 percent of those teens now buy their music from online music services such as Napster and iTunes compared to only 28 percent last period.

The survey also reported that use of illegal p2p downloading from unauthorized services fell eight percent to 64 percent.

"While P2P sharing is still the primary way teens get their music, buying online music is becoming more mainstream," stated one of the analysts who helped with the survey.

Although the research team only surveyed 1800 teenagers from 11 different cities in both Canada and the US, the numbers do seem to suggest a very slight move away from unauthorized downloading.

Source:
CBC

Earlier this week Sony America confirmed that they would stop selling the 20GB model of the PlayStation 3 to North American retailers.

However, Sony today confirmed that the lower end model will still be available in Japan, despite Sony America's decision.

A spokesperson for Sony confirmmed that, in Japan, "We're currently not considering changes akin to North America.

"However," the spokesperson added, "We would like to react flexibly with the market."

There is still no word on whether a decision will be made to sell the 20 GB model in Europe where so far only the 60 GB unit is available.

Source:
Gamesindustry.biz

In a huge move today, CBS has agreed to deals with Microsoft, Time Warner, Joost, ComCast, AOL, CNET Networks and a few others to allow content distribution in exchance for revenue sharing.

CBS already has many of its shows available online at cbs.com and through iTunes.

With the new deal, viewers will be able to watch popular shows like CSI and Survivor as well as sports shows, news, and other content for free online. The advertising revenue generated from the content will then be shared by the partners in the new deal.

The deal is probably most important for Joost, the on-demand online content distributer that is still trying to make a name for itself in the industry. So far, Joost has made deals with MTV, Comedy Central, BET and Paramount Pictures and this latest deal will add significant content to their roster.

Source:
Zeropaid

Yesterday, the Beatles and the music giant EMI agreed to finally settle their dispute over royalties the band believed were owed to them.

This move has fans hoping now that the Beatles catalogue will become available on iTunes.

The dispute dates back to 2005 when the living Beatles and the widows of the deceased Beatles sued EMI claiming that they were owed $60 million USD in missing royalties from sales dating between 1994 and 1999.

Although the terms of the settlement were not disclosed, an EMI spokesperson confirmed the settlement, "I can confirm that we have reached a mutually acceptable settlement and that we are not going to say anything more than that."

We hope that with this hurdle jumped, the Beatles music can finally move legally into the 21st century.

Source:
MP3.com

Following closely after the release of its firmware update 1.3 in February, a new firmware upgrade, version 1.5 has become available on Toshiba's official support site.

The firmware update is for all of Toshiba's second-generation HD-DVD players and will help fix connectivity and playback issues.

According to the official documentation by Toshiba, "As part of our commitment to provide world-class service to our customers, Toshiba is supplying this firmware update for use by purchasers of Toshiba HD DVD Player models HD-XA2, HD-A20, HD-A2, HD-A2W and HD-D2. This firmware update addresses certain disc playback and HDMI/DVI related problems identified by Toshiba."

You can also choose to upgrade directly through the player's ethernet port or you can call Toshiba directly and ask for a firmware CD which they will send free of charge if you are a registered owner of an HD-XA2, HD-A20, HD-A2, HD-A2W or HD-D2.

Source:
HD-Digest

In the past month there have a been a couple of movies that have caused issues on standalone HD-DVD players such as "Children of Men" and the new NIN concert disc and now there are reports of playback issues on standalone Blu-Ray players for the animated movie/game "Dragon's Lair".

After the reports were made that some players could not play the game and other drives, including the Playstation 3 were getting audio sync problems, Digital Leisure, the movie's publisher noted that that some players would be prone to playback issues.

"Due to the lack of Java standardization many players just aren't able to handle proper playback," said the company.

They also stated that the game would work on the following players guaranteed: The Samsung BD-P1000, Panasonic DMP-BD10, PowerDVD for the PC, Sony BDP-S1 and the PlayStation 3 (they could not replicate the audio sync issues reported).

If you do not have those players, then chances are you do not want to purchase this game yet until firmware updates enable BD-Java support in the players.

Source:
Joystiq

Creative, although in competition with Apple in the MP3 player market, continues to cater to the iPod crowd with impressive accesories.

Their newest releases are four lines of docking accessories for the iPod. Three include speakers while the last is made to pair with home theater systems or televisions.

The "X-Fi Sound System i600" is a copy of Creative's Z600 for the Zen Vision:M. The "Playdock i500" and "TravelSound I" are also copies of existing docks, the Zen's Z500 and the TravelSound Zen V. All three have built in speakers.

The new "Xdock Wireless", which was first showcased at CES, will connect wirelessly to any X-Fi remote reciever, which can then be wired to a home theater system or speakers through line out, digital audio, s-video or composite.

Source:
Engadget

After reports surfaced that the 20 GB model of the PlayStation 3 were becoming extinct, Sony has officially stopped offering the model to retailers in North America.

The decision, based heavily on the low demand for the model was not surprising.

Dave Karraker of Sony America stated, "At launch, we offered two separate models of PlayStation 3 to meet the diverse needs and interests of our PlayStation fan base. Initial retail demand in North America was upwards of ninety percent in favor of the 60GB SKU, so we manufactured and shipped-in accordingly. Due to the overwhelming demand for the 60GB model from both retailers and consumers, we have ceased offering the 20GB model here in North America. In addition to the larger internal hard drive, the 60GB PlayStation 3 features added storage media slots and built-in Wi-Fi not found in the 20GB system. Based on retailer and consumer feedback, we have decided to focus our current efforts on the more popular 60GB model."

Although there is no decision yet as to whether the 20 GB model will be sold in Europe, this move seems to indicate that the lower end model will soon be gone forever.

The RIAA has sent out a new round of pre-lawsuit letters to over 21 colleges and universities marking the third time this year that the group has sent out mass letters to colleges in hopes to stop the alleged p2p piracy that occurs daily on campus networks.

The letters the RIAA sends to colleges simply include an IP address and a date stamp. The college then needs to match that address to one of their students.

The RIAA does however, offer a discounted settlement price to the college students, a price somewhere lower than the $3000 USD that other alleged offenders are forced to pay to settle.

431 pre-lawsuit letters were dispatched to the following schools:

"Bates College (7 pre-litigation settlement letters), Brown University (12), Central Michigan University (24), Colby College (5), College of William & Mary (12), Cornell University (19), Fairfield University (15), Florida International University (16), Indiana University (28), Keene State University (19), Kent State University (19), Morehead State University (10), Ohio University (50), Oklahoma State University (16), University of Massachusetts – Amherst (32), University of Maryland System (25), University of Michigan – Ann Arbor (23), University of New Hampshire (17), University of New Mexico (16), University of Pennsylvania (17), University of Rochester (22), and Williams College (9)."

After many delays, Toshiba's mid-range HD-DVD player, the HD-A20 has finally shipped.

The A20 was first announced at CES in January but manufacturing delays have stopped it from hitting shelves earlier.

The A20 has better image quality than the entry level HD-A2 but does not have the HDMI 1.3 or DTS surround sound of the top of the line HD-XA2.

The price of the A20 will be $499 USD, 100 dollars less than when the player was announced at CES.

Source:
Electronista

After having over 2 million movies sold in the past 9 months through its iTunes store, Apple today has introduced a new catalogue of movies from MGM pushing their total to over 500 movies available.

The new movies will cost between $9.99 and $14.99 each for such titles such as "Dances With Wolves," "Mad Max," "The Great Train Robbery" and "Rocky," and the prices are about equal to buying an "older" physical DVD from a store or online.

"It's exciting to be bringing so many amazing films from our catalog to iTunes," said Douglas A. Lee, MGM's executive vice president of Worldwide Digital Media. "We have an unrivaled movie library and are looking forward to adding even more films in the future so users can take their favorite movies with them wherever they go."

We hope to see more titles available in the future from all distributers.

Source:
Techspot

While the iPod continues to be the market leader for portable mp3 players, recently selling its 100 millionth unit, Microsoft has been working on the 2.0 version of their Zune player and hopes to have its one millionth sold by June of this year.

Currently, the 2.0 is a little way aways from becoming a reality but Microsoft has revealed that they will be selling the first generation Zune in two new colors, "Watermelon Red" and "Baby Pink".

However, perhaps unknowingly, a Microsoft Zune engineer has revealed more than a few details for the new Zune 2.0.

The design of the new Zune will be identical except it will be thinner and include a larger HDD.

According to the engineer there will also be a new "Flash Zune" that will specifically compete with the iPod Nano and Shuffle.

According to the Microsoft employee, "the Flash Zune measures 3" x 1.25" x 0.25" vs. 4.4" x 2.4" x .58" for the original Zune and 3.5" x 1.6" x .25" for the 2G iPod Nano."

The flash Zune will have the same abilities as the current 2GB iPod Nanos and will include built in WiFi.

Microsoft plans to manufacture over 1.5 million of the new flash Zunes throughout the calender year of 2007.

Users of WinDVD 8 now need to update their software because an HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disc security group has begun pulling the encryption keys of PC software that have been hacked to allow unrestricted access to next gen discs.

The update for WinDVD will close the security hole and in the process, obtain new encrytion keys for the software.

Manufacturers have been working on removing the keys with some help from the AACS Licensing Administrator.

Hackers recently discovered how to sniff out protection keys by using an approach based on "figuring out memory changes made after playing high-def discs on their PCs."

The unlimited access to the keys allowed hackers to unscramble the content that was ripped from the discs and allowed them to make copies of the movie at their discretion.

With this newest update by the industry, the ball is back in the hacker's court.

Source:
TheRegister

A research team with members from Intel, Purdue, and Carnegie Mellon have created a technique that will accelerate P2P file sharing from 30-70 percent.

For users who are familiar with torrent and regular p2p downloading can agree that although still fast and effective, if there are few seeders and a large amount of downloaders, then your speeds will be effected.

The research team has stated that they have found a way to get around these limitations by using a technique called "Similarity-Enhanced Transfer (SET)". They plan to present the technique tomorrow at the 4th Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation.

SET in itself uses a lot of different techniques to help boost speeds. Many shared files contain peices of identical data. Examples of such pieces are music files that only differ in tags, movies dubbed in different languages and updated versions of applications and software.

SET divides large files into smaller segments first then uses a search method called "handprinting" to find similar files. If it finds any individual chunks that are identical then it adds those to the user's search or current download.

A result of using SET will be an expansion of available sources for any given file. Showing off SET in practice, the software seemed to work well. Using a P2P network such as Limewire, their rate of download for an MP3 track accelerated 70 percent. The results were almost as good when they tried downloading a movie trailer.

The MPAA and RIAA have often blamed China as one of the main avenues of media piracy of US entertainment. The MPAA has gone so far as to say that the film industry loses 2.3 million in revenue every year due to piracy.

For years the two groups as well as other members of the entertainment industry have been trying to get the Chinese government to take a tougher stance against US media piracy.

However, China has made steps to cut down on piracy but the main problem remains. There are many import restrictions placed on American goods such as movies, books and music and these restrictions lead to a higher demand for piracy in China as they have no alternative to getting the media they desire.

Still, with the decision to file a complaint with the WTO, a trade representative addressed a few of America's complaints and addressed the import issue.

"Piracy and counterfeiting levels in China remain unacceptably high,” U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwabb said. “Inadequate protection of intellectual property rights in China costs U.S. firms and workers billions of dollars each year, and in the case of many products, it also poses a serious risk of harm to consumers in China, the United States and around the world..."

We reported last week that the US was filing a piracy case against China, and after the decision was made, Nintendo of America declared very strong support for the government and their efforts to crack down on video game piracy in particular in China.

Each year, the US Trade Representatives gets reports from companies about foreign piracy and this year Nintendo gave evidence about piracy in China, Hong Kong, Mexico, Paraguay, and Brazil.

According to Nintendo's report there have been more than 7.7 million counterfeit videogame products seized from Chinese factories and retailers in the last 10 years.

In a statement, the company said China is "the leading production site and exporter for counterfeit Nintendo videogame products", and also has the largest domestic consumption - but there has only been one criminal prosecution.

"Numerous factories, where tens of thousands of counterfeit Nintendo products were seized, escaped with only trivial fines or no penalty at all. And often these production sites continue to operate after products are seized,"

Nintendo's senior director of anti-piracy praised the goverment highly for their latest efforts: "Nintendo will continue to work with the U.S. government while aggressively pursuing counterfeit Nintendo products in China. Read more...

The 20 GB model of the Sony Playstation 3 are beginning to disappear in the US. Many retailers have discountinued selling the 20 GB model in favor of the higher demanded 60 GB model. Even on Sony's offical online store SonyStyle, the lower end model is no longer available.

Speaking about the drop of the model at SonyStyle, a Sony spokesman had this to say: "The line-up [at SonyStyle] is decided based on market demand and so it's not surprising that they are not selling it on their website. But if you go to a retailer you can find it."

Besides SonyStyle, other retailers such as Best Buy, Gamestop and EB Games have stopped selling the model, but others such as Amazon continue to have in stock for the time being.

The lower end model is not currently available in Europe and a spokesperson for Sony has stated that there are no plans in the works to release it in the newar future.

"We'll continue to monitor demand for the 20GB model, from a consumer and retailer perspective, which will be factored into any future European launch plans."

Source:
Gamesindustry.biz

For the measily price of 49 Euros, you can get the iPod Nano's latest rival, a new group of MP4 players created by Computer Supermarket.

The new player, which is was created to look almost identical to the Nano has a 1.8-inch LCD, 4 GB of flash memmory, built-in FM radio, and more importantly, the ability to play all different sorts of audio and video codecs.

For those who want the same functionality of a Nano should look into these new MP4 players which were before only sold from places in Asia.

Source:
Pocket-lint.co.uk

In the upcoming Spring dashboard update, weve reported that Microsoft will add Live messenger compatibility as well as many other tweaks.

We did not however, mention the new addtion of three new video codecs. The Media Center as well as Windows Media Connect will be able to stream Mpeg-4 up to 8 Mpbs, H.264 at up to 15Mbps, and PlaysForSure WMV.

This is a great addition that will allow users to play an increasing amount of their videos on the 360.

Source:
Engadget

According to Bloomberg News and Joystiq, Electronic Arts, one of the world's largest video game publishers, had their sales drop 25% in February compared to the same month last year. Around the industry however, sales rose 28%.

EA, just like some of its competitors such as Take Two and Activision, underestimated Nintendo Wii sales and are now paying the price. There are now over 3 million Wii owners in the U.S. and Japan and EA is finally beginning to rush games out for the console.

EA has begun redeploying their resources towards Wii games and in the long run the Wii may be their saving grace. An analyst for game publishers has stated that Wii games cost just $2-5 million to create, while games for the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 can cost as much as $30 million.

We hope EA and other publishers take time to make sure these games are done right and not rushed solely for profit.

Source:
Joystiq

According to some retailers and video rental stores, shipments of Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies are coming in delayed and forcing the companies to pay for addded overnight costs just to be able to have the movies in stock for the street release date.

Sometimes, the movies are recieved as late as a week after the street release date.

Problems that are causing the delays seem to be stemming from the replication process. There are slim capacities already and added production problems like those for "Children of Men" are furthering the issues.

Lyne Fisher, spokeswoman at disc authoring company Cinram replied to the issues by saying "standard-definition has been around since 1997, so we have a lot of practice and the process is seamless... it's only natural that when there is a new process, it can take more time."

The company promises increased production by the end of the year and we hope all other authoring companies continue to improve as well.

Source:
Dailytech

In our previous article here we reported that the Spring dashboard update had been leaked by Gamespot. Due to the popularity of the clip, Microsoft has made the update official.

“Bringing the largest IM community in the world, Windows Live Messenger, to Xbox 360 makes sense, as Xbox LIVE has really become the largest social network on television," said Jerry Johnson, product unit manager of Xbox LIVE at Microsoft. "For our growing community of 6 million on Xbox LIVE, using Xbox 360 is a very social, connected experience. They are using Xbox 360 to play games, music and movies while simultaneously communicating with one another through video, voice and text chat. With this announcement we are simultaneously expanding the access of Xbox LIVE users to existing friends and family while introducing Windows Live Messenger users to the benefits of Xbox 360."

The update will be coming officially on May 7th and will offer many new updates including pop-ups notifying the gamer of the name of the achievement and the value without the need to manually check the list.

A new Xbox Live Marketplace “blade” will be set in place.

Because of a new research report from Sony, sales for next generation DVDs are finally becoming more public.

According to the report, Sony's new release "Casino Royale" smashed all previous records by shipping 100,000 units to retail and also in the report Sony has 5 of the top 10 releases for the month of March.

Also in the report, Blu-ray outsold HD-DVD an impressive 9:2 while dominating the top sellers list. The only HD-DVD movie to even make an appearence on the list was "The Departed".

The report is also the first to provide hard sales stats for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray from Nielson VideoScan, the industry leader in competitive sales data.

According to the numbers from VideoScan, since its inception there have been 844,000 Blu-ray units sold, while there have been 708,600 units sold for HD-DVD.

However, there are some notes for the numbers. The VideoScan numbers do not include Wal-mart sales and most online merchants. There are also many more Blu-Ray players in use due to the amount of PlayStation 3's that have been sold. In all we can see that next gen DVDs have a long way to go before they can share the market with current gen DVDs.

Source:
HD-Digest

KKBOX, an online music streaming platform with over 220,000 members in Taiwan has launched its first DRM-free track, the first ever to be legally introduced in Taiwan.

Through cooperation with the record publishers of the Chinese-language group "Blue Eyes", a "Blue Eyes" song will be available DRM-free for $.60 USD or free for those who have the monthly service from KKBOX.

The move will help KKBOX to compete with ezPEER+, Taiwan's largest p2p online music platform.

Source:
Digitimes

Next week, the US will file formal trade complaints against China after months of demanding a crackdown on pirated American movies, music and software.

The complaints will be filed with the World Trade Organization and will most likely escalate trade tensions between the two superpowers.

The complaints come after years of building a case of intellectual-property abuses against China.

The complaints claim that China has only prosecuted a small fraction of the street bootleggers and other pirates of American media.

In interesting fact to the whole case is that Microsoft, Apple and Pfizer have refused to support the case.

Source:
CNN

Today, the YuMe Network is set to launch a new network that would allow advertisers to insert advertising within the downloadable content, eliminating the need for DRM,

“Today we are launching a game-changing capability that will take online video advertising to another level,” said Jayant Kadambi, CEO and co-founder of YuMe Networks. “We are excited to bring advertisers a solution that enables them to insert dynamic, targeted and customizable campaigns in content downloaded from online destinations such as BitTorrent to any device — PC, mobile, IPTV and more.”

The company says it will be able to measure and track user viewing and pass this information onto the companies paying for the ads so they can constantly optimize the ads they deliver based on those results.

The first ad supported videos available on the BitTorrent network will be from the game "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary".

“We have been working diligently with a range of video publishers from the largest movie studios to the creators of independent video to advocate the role advertising can play in delivering their content to the BitTorrent community,” said Ashwin Navin, President and co-founder of BitTorrent, Inc. “The combination of our extensive user base, worldwide content relationships and powerfully efficient distribution model, is enabling a rapid shift toward free, ad-supported content available on the BitTorrent Entertainment Network.”

Nine Inch Nails, trying to promote their new album "Year Zero" have hit a roadblock. That roadblock is the RIAA.

In trying to promote their album, NIN released an internet scavenger hunt that led to a website where you can download singles from the new album. The band also dropped USB flash drives in the bathrooms of their concert venues, with each drive containing a song from the new album.

The idea was to get fans to swap the music and start talking about the new CD which is exactly what happened.

The whole plan backfired when the RIAA began to send out emails demanding the fans to remove the music from their sites and threatening to sue them for every single shared.

Why the RIAA is going against a decision that was signed off by the label they are trying to protect is anyones guess.


Source:
Inquirer

Just two weeks after the Apple TV began shipping, hackers have installed the Mac OSX onto the media box, turning it into the cheapest Mac ever sold.

"The breakthrough is done, OS X runs on Apple TV!" wrote "Semthex," the anonymous hacker responsible for the mod, at his website. "Now weve got (the) low-budget Mac we ever wanted."

The hack, although very difficult to perform for the casual user, has helped other hackers greatly.


"This hack seriously opens up the doors with what the Apple TV could be used for," said Tom Anthony, administrator of Apple TV Hacks, in an e-mail.

With the OS X installed, soon we should be able to see almost anything able to run on the TV, including Windows Media Center Edition or Linux.

The Apple TV has some powerful specs including a "Pentium M processor, as much RAM as Sony's PlayStation 3 and a faster graphics chip than a Nintendo Wii" and it was only a matter of time before hackers used that power to open up the TV to its full potential.

Apple so far has not made a statement openly about the hacks.

As of today, here are the hacks you can perform (and void your warranty with) on the Apple TV:

· Upgrade the hard drive Read more...

Jason Reindorp, the head of marketing for Microsoft's Zune, has made comments hinting that Microsoft is on the verge of a deal to sell EMI's music catalogue without DRM through their Zune platform.

As Mr Reindorp said: “We've been saying for a while that we are aware that consumers want to have unprotected content.

“This does open things up a little bit. It potentially makes the competition more of a device-to-device or service-to-service basis, and will force the various services to really innovate.”

EMI did not confirm but a spokesman did say: “Negotiations with other platforms, such as Zune, are ongoing.”

Zune is a direct competitor of the Apple iPod and EMI's announcement earlier this week to sell DRM free music on iTunes has surely prompted Microsoft to hastily try to emulate.

Source:
Timesonline

GameSpot has accidentally posted a video of the Xbox 360's spring Dashboard update and it has made its way to YouTube.

Although no one has confirmed the update or the leak, you can watch the video here (it does not look fake):
Video


According to the video, here are a few of the updates:

-Will be offcially released May 7th

-Your contacts will integrate Windows Live Messenger, and show joinable session status

-Your live messenger contacts can see what game you're playing, and your gamertag as well

-Marketplace will "have its own blade, which will be skinned independent of your theme"

-You can watch partially downloaded movies

-Other updates include "Users will now get inline achievement updates", "Low-power download mode and auto-shutdown", "You can text chat messenger six friends playing games watching movies" and finally a few tweaks to the interface.

Source:
Engadget

Today, Microsoft has dropped its lawsuit against "Viodentia", the team that created FairUSE4WM which easily circumvented Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM.

After charging "Viodentia" with copyright infringment for creating FairUSE4WM they voluntarilly dismissed the claims in Seattle Federal court today.

Why did Microsoft drop the case? They simply could not locate the team, and "serve them with process".

Source:
Engadget

Corel has introduced an AACS patch for their cracked InterVideo WinDVD software and according to Corel, "failure to apply the update will result in AACS-protected HD DVD and BD playback being disabled."

That means, either update, or never watch your High Def movies again. For added inconvinience, you have to track down and install the specific patch for your specific player.

What can we expect from Corel when this newest patch is cracked?

Source:
Engadget

In an update to our previous article here in which Malaysian pirates put out a bounty on MPAA sniffer dogs, the dogs have gone into hiding and Malaysian pirates have begun using a chemical spray on their pirated discs to mask the smell.

Lucky and Flo, the two sniffer dogs, have been moved from safe house to safe house in an effort to spare them from Malaysian bounty hunters.

The two labradors have been trained to detect the polycarbonate chemicals used in manufacturing DVDs, but Fahmi Kassim, a Malaysian official, has said that officials received a lead that pirates are now using chemical sprays to mask the scent.

"The pirates are believed to be desperate because the dogs were so successful," Fahmi told The Associated Press.

The dogs are on loan from the MPAA so how long they will have to remain in hiding before they are shipped back to the US is still in question.

Source:
Zeropaid

The popular uTorrent client has just been released in a new BETA that will have full Windows Vista support among a lot of other changes and upgrades.

Change log:

--- 2007-04-05: Version 1.7 (build 1085)

- Change: Tooltips over status bar and toolbar are now native tooltips instead of custom-drawn

- Fix: Bandwidth Allocation selection bug fixed

- Fix: Modal dialog boxes now give focus on close to the proper window (add button in RSS now gives focus back to RSS window, for example)

--- 2007-04-05: Version 1.7 (build 1065)

- Feature: Outgoing port range, via advanced settings (net.outgoing_max_port)

- Feature: List number of pieces we have in General tab (as part of Pieces:)

- Feature: Mark unavailable pieces as red in the Files tab (like in the general tab)

- Feature: Auto uplink throttling (beta)

- Feature: List web seeds in General tab

- Feature: Web seed support for single-file torrents

- Feature: NAT-PMP support

- Feature: Local Peer Discovery

- Feature: Option to configure whether rate limits apply to local peers (bt.limit_local_peers)

- Feature: Support for HTTPS links in RSS feeds

- Feature: Next Piece display Read more...

In another move to curb piracy in Asia, the MPAA has decided to distribute anti-piracy brochures to every school and library in Singapore. The brochures are meant to warn the citizens of Singapore about the wrongs of P2P and file sharing in general.

The brochures, entitled “Illegal File-Sharing: The Risks Aren’t Worth It” will be available in all 23 national Library branches as well as distributed to all of Singapore’s 164 secondary schools and 16 junior colleges.

The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) will be distributing over 200,000 copies of the brochure starting today.

The booklets note "that since many P2P applications require users to upload – often invisibly – content at the same time they are downloading, users may be exposing themselves to criminal liability as well."

The decision to distribute the brochures began after the raids in Malaysia a month ago in which a large ring of piracy was busted.

"They found computers and databases of customers from all over the world and I'm afraid to say that a lot of those customers are here in Singapore. The gangs that are involved in this are organized crime groups, unquestionably organized crime groups," revealed Michael Ellis, a senior VP for the MPAA International.

"And Singapore customers who are dialing or emailing their orders to Malaysia and asking for the products to be delivered here are involved and supporting organized crime. And I have to tell you, we know who you are and we're providing that information to the authorities in Singapore. If you think that by buying one disc or one pirated DVD, you're not involved in this, it doesn't affect you, you're wrong, it does," says Mr Ellis.

Everyday, we hear stories coming from the MPAA arguing that the illegal downloading of movies is having terrible consequences on the movie industry. In the latest report from USA Today however, we hear a very different story.

"Through Sunday, ticket sales are at $2.1 billion, a healthy 6% ahead of the same time last year and 5% ahead of 2005, according to estimates from Nielsen EDI", says Scott Bowles, one of the writers of the article.

With mega-blockbusters set to be released such as Spider Man 3, Shrek the third, and the final installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, many studio executives are pronouncing that 2007 will break all current box office records. According to the article "The record was set in 2004 with $9.54 billion in the USA, although 2002 holds the record for most tickets sold at 1.6 billion".

In the MPAA's latest rant, they claimed that illegal file sharing had cut over 2 billion dollars of revenue from box office sales in 2006. When taking the stats into account, we can plainly see that that fact is simply not true. In 2004, the domestic take was 9.54 billion, in 2005 it was 9 billion, and in 2006 the take was 9.49 billion. Where is the 2.3 billion dollar loss? I dont see it.

Azureus has renamed their hi-def BitTorrent service from Zudeo to "Vuze" a "hip" renaming of the word "views". The company is dearly hoping that their will be high consumer demand for HD content and they don't feel that current streaming technology can deliver reliable HD video in real-time.

Vuze requires that you the use a modified Azureus application that downloads the clips in question using BitTorrent but will also process payments for protected content and help you search for new content.

There have been more than 2 million unique users a month since the service was released as a beta in late 2006, says the company.

Vuze touts HD and standard definition content from major networks such as BBC, Showtime, A&E, the History Channel, and National Geographic as well as indie producers.

Clips can be purchased or rented depending on the content and the producer. BBC TV shows, for example, run for $0.99 an episode and Showtime gives away single episodes of its dramas for free to gain viewers.

The service remains in Beta for now, although the name is final and work continues to release a finished product soon.

Source:
Arstechnica

According to a survey by SurveyU, a group of researchers that conduct surveys of college students, although there are risks of getting in legal trouble with the RIAA, 67 percent of students on college campuses do not care and are overlooking the reprecussions of illegally downloading music.

Conducted during the weekened of March 24th, the survey asked 500 students how many songs they owned, how they acquired these songs, whether they side with the RIAA, musicians, the government, or other college students and how informed they were on the legal precedence of digital rights and illegal downloading.

The results were not all that surprising. 53 percent of the students were aware of the legal issues but only 35 percent of that group was familiar with their own legal rights.

The survey also found that only 57 percent of the student's total libraries had been purchased.

"Clearly there's a sense among college students that once a song has been digitized, it's free," said Dan Coates, Co-Founder of SurveyU. "This is a generation that has grown up around digital media and is living on the fault lines of a digital rights issue."

When asked if they felt illegal downloading was affecting musicians only 40 percent agreed while the other 60 percent gave a statement almost identical to this one: "Musicians don't suffer since their growing fan base buys concert tickets and makes other financial contributions to their success."

If you recently purchased the "Nine Inch Nails: Beside You In Time" concert disc and tried to play it in your Xbox 360 HD-DVD player you were most likely let down by the poor audio quality caused by a bug in Microsoft's audio decoding software.

The concert disc features an amazing Dolby TrueHD lossless audio track but the The Xbox 360 HD DVD player cannot output a TrueHD signal and instead downsamples the lossless stream to a lossy 640kbps Dolby Digital 5.1 mix.

However, even after being downsampled most users report that the tracks sound better than the everyday Dolby Digital track. This was not the case with the concert disc which was reported as having “static popping” and “clipping” noises, killing the experience of listening to the disc.

Fortunately for users, Microsoft has confirmed that their HD DVD team is aware of the bug and plans to address it in their next software update.

“We plan on shipping an update to the Xbox 360 HD DVD player in early to mid spring. In this update we will be adding DTS output, improved Audio, and improved title compatibility,” relayed a Microsoft employee, according to what he had heard from the Xbox team. “The variability there is that this is a software project and we are fixing/enhancing a lot of things and we want to make sure we get them right. So it is difficult to give an exact day for the update.”

Due to the increasing availability of mod chips for their Wii console, Nintendo recently began shipping a revised version of the Wii that included an altered circuit layout, one that makes system level mods more difficult to perform.

However, forums are buzzing with news that new modchips for use with the altered layout are less than a month away and when those hit, they will force Nintendo to once again upgrade their circuit layout.

Providers of Wii modification services in Taiwan have stated that they belive soon Nintendo will use more complex methods to block modifications for an extended period of time.

They believe Nintendo could possibly adopt a "ball grid array" IC packaging which, if exectuted properly, could extend the time needed by hackers to develop new modchips to at least four months.

We will see what Nintendo has in store for the Wii as hackers continue to modify the system daily.

Source:
Digital-Digest

Sony BMG Music Entertainment has struck a deal with Global Music International that would allow GMI to distribute most of the company's music videos, full track songs and ringtones, to mobile subscribers in China.

Just like in the US, Chinese subscribers will be able to buy and download songs, ringtones, and music videos right to their phones. The content available will include music and videos from Chinese and Western artists.

With over 300 million subscribers and growing, the Chinese mobile market is a very important one and interest in the market is growing as well.

Although there is huge potential for sales in China, it is an uphill battle. About 85 percent of content recordings in China are pirated. Two months ago, a lawsuit against Yahoo China was filed by 11 music companies incuding Sony BMG, claiming Yahoo China infringed copyrights by providing links to unlicensed music.

However, BMG sees their partnership as a way to get their content out to the Chinese market and hopefully slow down piracy.

"We have been impressed with Global Music International's established relationships with major telecommunications players in China, and are extremely pleased to be entering into a licensing agreement with them to offer our unique music content for mobile distribution on their partners' wireless networks," Kelvin Wadsworth, executive vice president for Sony BMG Music Entertainment in Asia, said in a statement. "We see this agreement as an important part of our overall strategy to innovate, find new ways for our artists to connect with their fans, and develop new revenue streams."

Although in its early stages, Hewlett-Packard has begun working on a gaming handheld that could let players use their surroundings as a backdrop for an interactive game.

During an unveiling for their "Mscape" prototype they showed a TV commercial that "featured a number of young hipster gamers roaming San Francisco while playing a game on Mscape that used cues from their environment as triggers to unlock new levels or bonuses."

"We want to get kids off the couch," responded Rahul Sood, chief technology officer of HP's gaming division.

Although general details were sketchy, Sood did say that the company was developing technology that would turn handhelds in gaming devices. When the technology was created they planned to license it far and wide.

Patrick Goddi, an HP company researcher, said that HP has been working on the Mscape technology for almost two years.

"It's the underlying layer that game developers could use to take advantage of sensors like GPS (global positioning system) or accelerometers like the ones in the Wii controller", he said.

It seems that a game organizer could place small sensors around a park or even a city and those sensors would trigger events in the handheld game, including bonus levels, event progression or even attacks from villains.

In figures released yesterday by Sony, it is revealed that during the first ten days of sales in Australia, over 27,000 consoles were sold. Playstation 3 games also dominated the charts, where 9 out of the top 10 titles were PS3 games. The only non-PS3 game? Final Fantasy XII for the PlayStation 2.

The launch of the PS3 helped cause a significant spike in video game sales for the entire Australian market. "Our data revealed that in a matter of just ten days the PlayStation 3 created a spike in retail spending not previously witnessed at the launch of any other console in Australia," commented GfK's (a data tracker) Daniel Morse.

"This spending continued into the second week of trading, resulting in sales of 27,083 PlayStation 3 consoles in just ten days."

Sony Australia managing director Michael Ephraim added, "Following a great launch for the PS3 across the country, it’s very satisfying for us to see that our close planning with retail and channel partners has ensured that all consumers wanting to get their hands on a PS3."

The PlayStation 2 continued to sell well also, with almost 8000 PlayStation 2 consoles sold in the 8-day period of March 19th to the 26th.

According to the MPAA and IFPI, a police raid was conducted today in Sao Paulo, Brazil on 4 seperate locations that were used to manufacture pirated CDs and DVDs. In all, 30,000 pirated CDs and DVDs were confiscated alongside over 200 burners.

The raids were a result of an investigation into piracy rings in Sao Paulo and more arrests are expected in the coming days.

Pirated DVDs and CDs are very commonplace in third world and developing countries but many American movie studios have yet to set a long term strategy to fight it.

So far, only two studios, Warner and Fox have ever done anything to combat piracy and that is to sell retail DVDs for unbelievably cheap prices. Both companies sell their DVDs on the streets of Russia and China for under $3 USD.

Source:
Arstechnica

Today, Plasma and LCD are the two main technologies in HDTVs but reports indicate that by this time next year, Laser TV will emerge and bring the best picture quality yet.

Novalux Inc., one of the main developers of the new technology has promised that the technology has great benefits over current technology including half the production cost, double the color range, and three-quarters less power consumption.

Laser TV technology is suited for projection (both front and rear), and will most likely replace the UHP lamp currently used in today's projection TVs.

At this year's CES, Sony displayed a Novalux-powered laser TV at its booth although the company has yet to formally announce a laser-based product.

Greg Niven, the vice president of marketing at Novalux had this to say about the event: “At CES we had a laser TV beside a plasma TV, an LCD TV and a traditional UHP lamp TV, so that’s four TVs lined up running our own produced high definition content, and I mean, it was a no brainer. The laser TV had a way, way better picture than any of the other conventional technologies.”

Novalux is currently in discussions with a few OEMs in an effort to bring the technology into living rooms within a year’s time. “We now have over four design wins in laser TVs for four different brands that are scheduled for launch in 2008,” said Niven.

On Monday we reprted that Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple had joined EMI executives to announce that EMI music would become available without DRM from the iTunes store.

Although Jobs has been a strong supporter for DRM free music he seems to have very different opinions about video DRM.

When asked about his feelings about the potential of lifting DRM from video, Jobs had this to say: "Video is pretty different from music right now because the video industry does not distribute 90 percent of their content DRM free. Never has. So I think they are in a pretty different situation and I wouldn't hold it to a parallel at all."

Jobs' argument is that CDs are sold without DRM and other copyright protection so it should be the same with music sold online. However, when referring to videos he mentions CSS the technology that comes with all DVD's and is intended to prevent copying. In his mind, videos were always sold with copyright protection and so therefore videos sold now are no different.

Anti-DRM activists and analysts don't buy into that explanation.

"Most people believe he's taking advantage of a technicality when he says that," said James McQuivey, a principal analyst at Forrester Research.

In the latest edition of the "Eurogamer TV Show", Sony's Ray Maguire and Microsoft's Neil Thompson have been interviewed and speak out about their product's value propositions and of course criticize the competition.

One of the issues discussed was the competing online offerings. Neil Thompson, the UK Xbox boss stated, "We passionately believe that online gaming, and having an identity within the online gaming community, is what's core to what you need to offer - a service that can transcend different titles where you can communicate with your gaming friends no matter what platform you're on and what game you're playing.

"I don't see how Sony can really deliver that, and they're certainly not delivering that in a compelling way today," he continued. "I think what Sony's talking about has compelling aspects to it, but I don't think there's anything there that... We're going to be afraid of competing with, because we will certainly evolve our service as we move forward."

Xbox Live has certainly been very popular among gamers, with over 6 million subscribers signed up to date. Sony UK managing director Ray Maguire did bring up a good point by noting that there was no way to tell how many of those 6 million are paying the full annual subscription fee. He then reminded that the PlayStation 3 online service is and always will be, free.

"I look at our [service] as being an inclusive area for people to be able to communicate and play with each other," he said. "Some content will clearly be downloadable and chargeable, but it should be an environment that people can get together and explore by themselves without having someone say, 'We're going to charge you for entering this space.'"

In the latest figures released by the company Enterbrain it is revealed that in Japan the Nintendo Wii is outselling Sony's PlayStation 3 two to one.

Bloomberg news reported that approximetely 2 million Wii consoles have been sold in Japan since its launch on December 2 while only 812,000 PS3 units have been sold since it went on sale on November 11th.

Although that is a large gap, it seems that the sales gap is narrowing as time moves on. In January, the company Media Create reported that the ration of Wii sales compared to PS3 sales was 4-to-1.

Japanese sales figures for the Xbox 360 were not released but in general sales fail to top four figures according to Enterbrain.

Source:
Gamesindustry.biz

A few months ago we reported that the web hotel PRQ and The Pirate Bay were raided in Sweden. During the raid, the police not only confiscated Pirate Bay's servers but many other servers from PRQ's server room. With this, many companies lost their livelihoods and were financially ruined. After the raid, both the police and the prosecutor in charge were charged with official misconduct, but none of the charges led to an investigation. It was concluded by the judge that during the circumstances the confiscations were justified.

Since then, the Ombudsmen of Justice (JO) has been investigating if there had been any irregularities before the raid. There were ongoing rumors that the MPAA and other lobby organizations tried to steer high officials into pressuring the police to act swiftly againt The Pirate Bay.

The latest report published clearly states that the MPAA and even the American embassy had contacted the current Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström and the Secretary of State Dan Eliasson hoping to get them to force the police into action.

However, the JO has come to the conclusion that neither of the two men have done anything illegal nor have they attempted to influence the police.

In its second week of release in the UK, Chart Track has revealed and confirmed that sales of the Sony PlayStation 3 have plummeted 82 percent.

Chart Track gathered the information from over 7000 UK retail outlets including Gamestation, play.com, HMV and GAME.

After a strong first week it seems the demand for the PS3 has fallen substantially in the UK.

Also in this weeks charts it is revealed that sales of the top PS3 games; Resistance: Fall of Man and MotorStorm have dropped by over 60 percent.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has yet to comment on the numbers.


Source:
Gamesindustry.biz

Microsoft has once again made some changes to the Xbox 360's warranty. Back in December they boosted the console's warranty from 90 days to a full 365. However, these new changes fill in any gaps that the warranty service was lacking before.

The first of the new changes is in shipping. Microsoft will send you a prepaid postage box to return your console to the repair center whether you are in warranty or out.

Customers are still responsible for repair costs if your console is out of warranty but when Microsoft sends you back a repaired console it will come with a fresh one-year repair warranty.

Another exciting warranty addition is faster repair service. Microsoft has committed to repairing and shipping your broken console within five business days. Microsoft also plans to add more Xbox customer care representatives and is bulking up its on-site technical support facilities.


Source:
Dailytech

The Digital Freedom Campaign (DFC), an organization that was founded last fall by a few groups inlcuding EFF hopes to help educate students about real copyright and fair use laws( not just what the RIAA will have you believe) and also show them how to fight back against the RIAA.

This week, DFC announced a new initative entitled "Digital Freedom University" which is made specifically to counteract the MPAA and RIAA's propoganda on media and copyright issues.

According to a statement by DFC, "DFU will educate students about their fair use rights, encourage them to obtain content legally, and help them oppose efforts to restrict or violate their digital freedoms." DFC will help create student-led chapters at universities around the country in an attempt to get students to participate more in debates about file sharing, piracy and copyright laws.

To no ones surprise, the RIAA and MPAA have been strong critics of the DFC accusing them of taking a position on copyright and fair use outside of the mainstream while saying the RIAA was the real champions of fair use.

The RIAA and MPAA however, are not consistent with their words. They claim to be champions of fair use but lock their movies and music with DRM and other consumer freedom limiting restrictions. The RIAA has even gone so far as to suggest that ripping CDs may be unauthorized as well.

Over the fast few years, Hollywood executives have worried that Oscar screeners (the DVDs that are sent to industry insiders who vote on the Oscar winners) will find their way onto the internet and onto file sharing websites. Wired however, would beg to differ. After analyzing more than 150 Oscar nominees from the last 5 years they noticed that most of the rips found on torrent and p2p sites were available before the discs were ever sent to Academy members.

Wired claims that the real culprits of most leaked screeners are critics, video store operators, marketers or even the studios themselves looking for added attention for the movie.

An example is the popular movie Crash which had a DVD quality rip available on torrent sites over 100 days before screeners were sent out to Academy members.

Source:
Wired

When Samsung lowered the retail price of its Blu-ray Disc player BP-1000 to $469.99 USD last month, Toshiba immediately reduced the retail price for its entry-level HD DVD player HD-A2 to $399 USD.

Taiwanese optical disc drive makers have stated that this price competition will force all entry level Blu Ray and HD-DVD player models to be launched at $499 USD or less during the second half of this year.

The sources have indicated that $500 USD is now the market acceptance price for optical disc drives. Blu Ray and HD-DVD players were not originally expected to hit prices of $500 or lower until the 4th quarter of this year but Toshiba launched the HD-E1 at that price earlier this month. With all the added pressure from the HD-DVD camp, Blu Ray had to follow suit, and prices have been falling ever since.

We hope to see even lower prices and higher disc reading speeds in the near future.

Source:
Digitimes

it has been revealed that the Xbox 360 Elite will not output multi-channel PCM audio over HDMI which is no different than what occurs in Core and Premium systems.

The Elite will support the HDMI 1.2 specification. When connected to an HDTV set with HDMI input, the Xbox 360 will automatically select the appropriate video output resolution up to 1080p. Users will not be able to manually force resolutions however.

The HDMI audio output will still not be fully functional as many users hoped. The Elite will not output uncompressed multi-channel audio. HD-DVD users should look elsewhere if they hope to enjoy the lossless HD-DVD audio formats.

“If you are keen on having 5.1 PCM output, I recommend purchasing the Toshiba A2 player which after the price drop, will be much cheaper than Elite" was one such resonse to the audio functionallity of the Elite.

All Dolby Digital Plus and TrueHD audio tracks will continue to be down mixed and the output would be no different than the Xbox 360 Core or Premium systems.

Nevertheless, the Xbox 360 Elite can output 2-channel PCM audio over HDMI. “The goal was to provide a digital connection for video which people wanted for some of their TVs. And of course, single cable A/V connection. So if having analog video bothered you before, you can now use digital. If you lacked component/VGA on your TV, you are in business with Xbox 360 Elite.”

Representative Ric Keller (R-FL) has proposed a new bill (HR 1689) called the "Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act of 2007" that will give colleges federal money to fight p2p.

The bill amends the "Higher Education Act", a bill that supplies federal money to universities and allows that money to be used for programs that reduce illegal downloading of copyrighted content.

The goal of the bill is to free up university money that would otherwise be spent on added bandwith costs and so the universities can use the extra money on keeping campuses secure from viruses that can find their way into user's computers through p2p programs. The bill notes that "computer systems at colleges and universities are intended primarily to aid in educating and increase research capability among students and faculty."

The "Higher Education Act" allows that the extra money from federal funding can be used in certain areas such as financial aid grants generally, but the new amendment to the bill would allow the money to be used for additional areas.

Although it is not guarenteed that the bill will ever make it to a vote, it should be intersting to follow its path through Congress.

Last week, the MPAA announced they supported the "Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act (2007)," and MPAA head Dan Glickman said that the group was set to begin working with schools and administrators to put an end to movie piracy on University campuses.

The MPAA has compiled a list of American schools that make their so called "dishonor roll" and included the amount of students identified as downloading unauthorized movies.

1. Columbia University - 1,198
2. University of Pennsylvania - 934
3. Boston University - 891
4. University of California at Los Angeles - 889
5. Purdue University - 873
6. Vanderbilt University - 860
7. Duke University - 813
8. Rochester Institute of Technology - 792
9. University of Massachusetts - 765
10. University of Michigan - 740
11. University of California at Santa Cruz - 714
12. University of Southern California - 704
13. University of Nebraska at Lincoln - 637
14. North Carolina State University - 636
15. Iowa State University - 586
16. University of Chicago - 575
17. University of Rochester - 562
18. Ohio University - 550
19. University of Tennessee - 527
20. Michigan State University - 506
21. Virginia Polytechnic Institute - 457
22. Drexel University - 455
23. University of South Florida - 447
24. Stanford University - 405
25. University of California at Berkeley - 398

In a huge announcement, Apple and EMI have announced that all of EMI's catalogue will be sold through the iTunes music store without DRM. EMI said in the announcements that all the songs will be available for $1.29 and users can upgrade their DRM locked songs to the DRM-free versions for 30 cents if they wish.

The bitrate of all of EMI's tracks will also jump from the now available 128kpbs to excellent quality 256kbps AAC files.
"We believe that offering consumers the opportunity to buy higher quality tracks and listen to them on the device or platform of their choice will boost sales of digital music," said EMI CEO Eric Nicoli during this morning's press conference.

Customers can still choose to buy the DRM locked, low bitrate tracks for 99 cents.

EMI also said that they would be selling unprotected music videos and albums at the existing prices through iTunes.

We can only hope that the rest of the Big Four labels will watch this revolution closely.

Source:
Arstechnica

The Corel Corporation has announced that they will be releasing Ulead DVD Moviefactory 6 Plus which will be the first consumer entry level product to have HD-DVD burning capability.

New features include:
Among the range of exciting new features, Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus introduces the Edit Room, allowing users to edit captured video on an intuitive timeline with overlays, titles and music tracks. For video editors that demand more from a DVD authoring application, Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus includes comprehensive menu templates, and the facility to work with HDV, DivX or AVCHD, and output in HD DVD, Blu-ray, DVD-Video or legacy VCD.

The English version of Corel Ulead DVD MovieFactory 6 Plus will retail for $80 USD from the Ulead website.

Source:
Emedialive

In the past few weeks, the Dutch anti-piracy foundation BREIN has shut down 10 illegal p2p file sharing sites including the previously reported dsb-tracker.org.

Some of the sites included were the Dutch sites ambachtor.org, bubbles-torrents.nl, flowtorrents.org, and extrempowerfreaks.org. Combined, the 10 sites had over 40,000 registered users and over 5000 available torrents.

The site operator of dsb-tracker had been put on notice to stop their illegal activities but declined to. BREIN then went to the sites hosting provider and demanded they take down the site. This led to the site operator taking down the site himself. Another of his p2p sites, dsb-scene.org was also put on notice.

Although 40,000 members and 5000 torrents seems like a tiny number, over the past 15 months BREIN has taken down 131 sites for a total of 1.6 million users.

Source:
Aboutthescene